weekends

If you've been keeping track of expenses and practicing smart savings, the last thing you want to do is sabotage all of your hard work in the course of a single weekend. Instead, make your weekends fun without spending too much cash. Think about purchases and use these tips to spend smarter and keep yourself on track throughout your weekend routine:

1. Get in the habit of DIY — Take some free time during the weekend to sharpen your sewing skills, or rifle through a cookbook and try some new recipes. Mastering these skills will mean you're less likely to need a professional to sew a tear in your favorite jeans or crave dinner out when you can whip up something just as delicious at home — and you're going to save a lot of money each time you opt to do it yourself.
2. Save big on eating out — Restaurants have seen some tough times lately, with fewer patrons eating out. Take advantage when you dine out by researching which places in your area are offering discounts.
3. Plan activities that don't require spending — You can be social without spending. Have friends over for an at-home hangout, like a game or movie night. Be mindful of how much you're spending, and shift your focus from costly activities to something equally fun but less cash-demanding, like getting outdoors, or getting creative with leftovers.

Get the rest of my savvy weekend tips after the jump.

I'm a planner. I make to-do lists. I thrive off being efficient and optimizing my productivity. Call it savvy, call it geeky, call it a sign of Type A personality, but that's just how I work. Thankfully, it's not an around-the-clock habit, and I have taught myself the importance of unwinding on the weekends with a simmer-down-from-the-grind routine. If I'm not traveling, I have a Saturday morning habit of waking up, working out, then meeting my main squeeze or a girlfriend for breakfast at my favorite French bakery and enjoying a leisurely latte. While simple, the routine helps me collect myself, slip into weekend mode and live in the moment. From then on, the weekend is playtime.

My sister, on the other hand, keeps her iCal open on her iPhone all weekend and follows her planned events and appointments as if they were meetings with the boss.

Do you typically carry the structure of the work week into the weekend, or do you just take a deep breath and let it happen?

After working hard and being productive all week, there’s nothing like two days of freedom stretching out ahead of you to give your mood a lift. Or is there?

A recent German study has found that people tend to be most bummed out about life in general on Sundays, with Saturdays and Fridays following closely behind. And (much less official) research by Zubin Jelveh of The New Republic finds that Americans experience the weekend blahs, too — 90 percent of Americans think life is good on Wednesdays, compared with only 79 percent on Sundays.

So what gives? Anticipation of a new workweek beginning, maybe? Or is work such a big part of our lives that we feel adrift and slightly depressed when we’re not actually working?

Source: Flickr User strochka